How to design and develop a product collaboratively

At doppel, we’ve spent the past three years developing our first product. Now that we’ve begun manufacturing, we wanted to reflect on our design and development process and share some of the lessons we’ve learnt along the way. Let me know in the comments if this is helpful!

There are so many ways to go about developing a product, but we believe that working as a team and sharing ideas is the best way to iterate.

We follow a seven step process, and evaluate each step against three criteria. It might sound complicated, but if you stick to them, you’ll end up with a tried and tested product that your customers will love.

Our seven step process:

Define your space

Become an expert

Get physical!

Reality check

High fidelity

Spend some money...

Create the final prototype

Steps 1-3 should be as free from constraints as possible - to dream up totally innovative products you need to disregard reality (at least to start with)!

Our three criteria:

User

Function

Aesthetic

Each criteria is equally as important. Within your team you must have at least one champion for each area as this will combat any inherent bias that each member of your team may have.

I’m going to take you through our journey to show how it should work.

Define your space

User: Identify the problem or demand, focus in on your core demographic, examine market trendsFunction: Brainstorm solutions to the problem, explore products that currently exist this in spaceAesthetic: Define your inspiration, look at current trends, create a mood board to guide style

Andreas, Jack and Fotini brainstorming doppel right at the very beginning

Reality check

User & Function: Create a ‘works like’ prototype. Can the user experience your solution?Function & Aesthetic: Create a digital prototype on CAD software. Does the design work within the aesthetic constraints you’ve devised?Aesthetic & User: Create a ‘looks like’ prototype. Can the user see what your final design will look like?

A 'works like' prototype and our first 'looks like' prototype

High fidelity

User & Function: Create a prototype that delivers the solution as intended, even if it doesn’t look perfectFunction & Aesthetic: Create 3D prints of your digital design, even if your user wouldn’t be totally happyAesthetic & User: Create a prototype that uses your final materials and looks beautiful, even if it doesn’t work perfectly.

3D prints (carefully posed)

Spend some money…

User & Function & Aesthetic: Create a fully finished prototype using correct materials, colours, and functionality and test it with your users. Do a number of tests with different people and each time charge your priority: first, usability, then functionality, and then style.

Create the final prototype

User: Check the safety and the certification status of all of your partsFunction: Check the supply of your partsAesthetic: Begin the tooling process for your final materials

The final design!

Some final words of advice

Make sure you evaluate your product at each stage of the process. Don’t always trust your judgement, check with your team and your users.

Never forget to get physical. Digital renders look beautiful but it’s not the same as holding a prototype in your hands.

Early on don’t bother designing the sexiest design on CAD software before you’ve tried a rough version of your design on your users. You will quickly see you missed some fundamental issues and therefore wasted a lot of time.